How 7 salespeople entered 15+ export markets with automated lead generation
Analote's 7 salespeople entered 15+ export markets without extra prospecting time. Automation did over 95% of lead generation and got 282 interested replies.
Written byVytas MikulėnasFounder, Lean Sales Systems- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 8 min read
TL;DR
- Analote, a Lithuanian wooden pallet maker, exports across Europe with a 7-person sales team that used to write every cold email by hand.
- Lean Sales Systems automated the research and outreach for all 7 reps: 48,439 decision makers reached in more than 15 countries, each in their own language.
- In 6 months of campaigns, 282 replies were tagged Interested, most asking for prices, samples or delivery terms. Then we trained the team to run the system in-house.
On this page
Analote makes wooden pallets in Lithuania and exports them across Europe. Lean Sales Systems replaced its hand-written cold emails with an automated, multilingual outreach system for all 7 salespeople. In 6 months it reached 48,439 decision makers in more than 15 countries, and 282 replies were tagged Interested.
| Client | Industry | Service | Market | Period |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Analote | Manufacturing, wooden packaging | Managed lead generation and training | More than 15 countries in Northern, Western and Central Europe | December 2025 to July 2026 |
Key results
| Decision makers reached | Replies | Interested replies | Manual work saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| 48,439 | 1,192 | 282 | about 8,070 hours |
Interested replies are replies tagged Interested in Reply.io: most buyers asked for prices, a sample, delivery terms or a call. Hours saved is an estimate, explained below.
About Analote
Analote is a wooden pallet maker from Telšiai, Lithuania, in business since 2008. It sells pallets, pallet collars and sawn timber to manufacturers and logistics companies across Northern and Western Europe, with FSC and IPPC certification for export.
The challenge
Analote had the product, the certificates and a 7-person sales team. What it lacked was a way to reach a huge, price-driven market without every rep doing everything by hand.
| Challenge | Why it hurt |
|---|---|
| A huge market for a standard product | Almost every manufacturer and warehouse in Europe uses pallets. Buyers compare on price and reliability, so winning new ones takes a lot of conversations. |
| Strong competition | Other Lithuanian pallet makers sell into the same Western European markets. Generic offers get lost. |
| Cold emails written by hand | Each rep found contacts in data tools, then wrote and sent emails 1 by 1 from Outlook. Volume stayed low and depended on how busy the rep was. |
| No shared process | All 7 reps ran the full sales cycle their own way. Their targets were calls and emails sent, not interested buyers. |
| No tracking | Nobody could see who had been contacted, when, or what they answered. |
| Many countries, many languages | Buyers in Germany, France, the Netherlands and the Nordics get a lot of generic English email. It is easy to ignore. |
Markets and focus
We split Europe by country and buyer type: manufacturers, logistics centres and warehouses, and pallet traders. That made more than 20 small markets, each with its own language and message.
| Market | Who we reached | Companies | Volume | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| German-speaking (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) | Owners, managers and buyers | Mid-market manufacturers with hundreds of employees, logistics centres, trade fair exhibitors | 13,386 email contacts | 1.63% email reply rate |
| French-speaking (France, Belgium, Luxembourg) | Owners, managers and buyers | Manufacturers, warehouses, furniture makers | 9,044 email contacts | 1.35% |
| Nordics (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland) | Owners, managers and buyers | Manufacturers, warehouses, fish and seafood processors | 5,488 email contacts | 2.04% |
| Netherlands and Italy | Owners, managers and buyers | Manufacturers, warehouses, logistics centres | 1,990 email contacts | 2.81% |
| English-language lists across Europe | Owners, managers and buyers | Pallet traders, manufacturers, logistics hubs in many countries | 21,513 email contacts | 1.03% |
Pallet traders and other packaging companies were a market of their own. Many sell pallet types they do not make, so we offered Analote as a partner to complete their range.
The solution
We built a system that does the non-selling work for all 7 reps: finding the right companies, finding the right people, writing in the buyer's language, sending and following up. The reps only handled the conversations.
| Building block | What it did for Analote | Why we used it | Tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. AI lead research | Pulled companies from business directories and trade fair lists (for example Hannover Messe and LogiMAT). AI research agents read about 15,500 company websites and kept only those that use pallets in volume. | In a market this big, most of a rep's prospecting time went into finding companies. The agents did it in days, not months. | Clay (a data platform that combines 100+ data sources and AI in one table), Europages, LinkedIn Sales Navigator |
| 2. Email finder and verifier | Found and checked 50,000 work emails before sending. | Emails to dead addresses push a sender into spam. 99.9% of emails reached a valid address. | Clay |
| 3. Automated outreach tool, a sequencer | Connected the email and LinkedIn accounts of all 7 reps. Sent personal emails and follow-ups to most of the market, and daily LinkedIn invites and messages to key accounts, up to each account's safe limit. Each prospect got the message in the language of their country. | 1 process for all 7 reps, running every day, no matter how busy they were. A message in the buyer's own language stands out from generic English email. | Reply.io, LinkedIn |
| 4. Hand-off to sales | Every reply landed in the rep's own inbox in the outreach tool, tagged by status, with weekly numbers in a shared report. Reps also got phone numbers for target companies, so they could call after email and LinkedIn. | Nothing got lost between a reply and a price offer, and every contact was tracked for the first time. | Reply.io inbox, Notion report |
| Extra: team training | Trained the team on cold outreach, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, building lists with AI, scraping directories and event lists, and running the outreach tool. | Analote wanted to run the system with its own people. | Clay, Instant Data Scraper, Reply.io |
| Extra: separate sending inboxes | Set up dedicated sending inboxes and warmed them up before campaigns. | Keeps volume per inbox low and emails out of spam. | Maildoso, Zapmail |
What made the difference. Localized outreach. Emails in the buyer's own language got 1.73% replies. English emails got 1.03%. That is about 70% more replies, across German, French, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Italian campaigns. Some emails said openly that the team was still learning the language and that a reply in English or German was fine. Buyers answered anyway.
What changed
These are tracked results, not estimates. They cover the campaigns Lean Sales Systems ran, from 13 January to late July 2026.
| Metric | Result | Tracked in |
|---|---|---|
| Companies researched | About 15,500 company websites checked by AI research agents | Lead research table |
| Decision makers reached | 48,439 by email and LinkedIn, in more than 15 countries | Reply.io, weekly report |
| Outreach actions | 119,176 emails, follow-ups, LinkedIn invites and messages | Reply.io, weekly report |
| Emails delivered | 99.9% reached a valid address | Reply.io |
| 9,729 connection requests, about 21% accepted | Reply.io | |
| Replies | 1,192: 748 by email, 444 on LinkedIn | Reply.io |
| Reply rate by language | 1.73% in the local language, 1.03% in English | Reply.io |
| Interested replies | 282 replies tagged Interested: 185 by email, 97 on LinkedIn | Reply.io |
| Time to first interested reply | 2 days after launch | Reply.io |
| Rep time spent on lead research and cold emails | Close to none. The system did the research, writing and sending. | Project setup |
Most interested buyers asked for a price, a sample or delivery terms. The reps replied with prices and offers, and followed up by phone. Warehouses, logistics centres and pallet traders responded best.
Extra benefits
- 1 process for 7 reps. Every rep ran the same outreach every day, instead of each one working their own way.
- Every contact tracked. For the first time, Analote could see who was contacted, when, and what they answered.
- New countries without new hires. Buyers in more than 15 countries got messages in their own language, with no native speakers hired.
- Time back for calls. The hours reps used to spend finding contacts and writing emails went into phone calls with interested buyers.
- Market lessons. Warehouses, logistics hubs and pallet traders were the strongest buyer groups. New niches such as fish and seafood processors were tested quickly.
- Skills in-house. The team learned to build its own lead lists with AI and a free scraping tool, and to run the campaigns.
What this could be worth
The numbers below are estimates, not results reported by Analote. We keep them apart from the tracked results on purpose.
Work the system did
| Estimate | Value | How we calculate it |
|---|---|---|
| Value of outreach work | about €218,000 | 48,439 decision makers x €4.50, the typical in-house cost to research and contact 1 person in Lithuania |
| Manual work saved | about 8,070 hours, or about 50 months of 1 full-time person | 48,439 x 10 minutes to find, research, write to and follow up with 1 person; 160 working hours a month |
| Outreach work automated | more than 95% | Research, email finding, writing, sending and follow-ups ran in the system. Reps only answered replies and called. |
| Interested leads compared with 1 salesperson | about 2.5x | Our model of how many interested leads 1 full-time salesperson finds by hand in the same 6 months |
| Cost per interested lead | about 44% lower | Compared with our model of what an interested lead costs when a salesperson finds it by hand |
This is the value of the activity, not a return. Much outreach never turns into a deal. It shows the work the system did instead of people.
Projected deals within 12 months
| Scenario | Interested replies that become customers | Projected deals |
|---|---|---|
| Pessimistic | 5% | 14 |
| Average | 10% | 28 |
| Optimistic | 15% | 42 |
Assumption: 5% to 15% of interested buyers become customers within 12 months, a typical range for mid-market B2B sales. Analote does not share deal sizes, so we do not estimate revenue.
What happened next
From April to July 2026, Lean Sales Systems trained Analote's team to run the system themselves: building lists with AI, scraping business directories and event lists, running the outreach tool and testing new niches such as fish and seafood processors. Since late July 2026, Analote runs the campaigns in-house.
A system problem, not a hiring problem
Most companies treat new business as a hiring problem: add a salesperson, or ask the team to send more emails. It is a system problem. Lean Sales Systems builds the research, outreach and follow-up system, in your buyers' languages, and your people have the conversations. See more results in our B2B case studies.
FAQ
Does outreach in the buyer's language work if the team does not speak it?
Yes. In Analote's campaigns, emails in the local language got about 70% more replies than English ones. Lean Sales Systems wrote the messages for each country, and buyers could answer in English or German if they preferred.
How much time did Analote's salespeople spend on it?
Almost none on prospecting. The system found the companies and contacts, wrote and sent the emails and LinkedIn messages, and stopped when someone replied. The reps answered interested buyers, sent prices and called.
Who did Analote target?
Mid-market manufacturers with hundreds of employees, logistics centres and warehouses, and pallet traders who resell, in more than 15 countries across Northern, Western and Central Europe. Later campaigns tested niches such as fish and seafood processors and furniture makers.
